American Evangelicals don’t understand the music video is hilarious and cutting.
By James Finn | DETROIT – Did you know Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rose to fame as a TV comedian? People around the world are praising him for his courage resisting Russian aggression, but few know he once starred in a series about a teacher who becomes Ukraine’s president, that he voiced Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian version of the popular film, or that he won Dancing With The Stars in 2006.
Until a few days ago, almost nobody in the West realized that in 2014, he brought much of Ukraine (and Russia) to its knees with a parody version of a song by Ukrainian Europop boy band Kazaky — that had him dancing and winking in heels and a crop top.
Why are some Evangelical Christians and other U.S. right wingers saying this video is reason to hope Russia succeeds in controlling Ukraine? First, they have no idea what they’re watching. Second, they’re so obsessed with hating LGBTQ people and culture that they’ll readily sacrifice democratic values and ideals of freedom and liberty.
Let’s take a look at what’s going on, but first, I should mention that I once read and spoke Russian with ease, and for about the last year I’ve been sharpening my skills again via YouTube. I don’t have an opinion on the great Russian/Ukrainian language/dialect debate, but I can understand a great deal of Ukraine’s Got Talent (which is awesome) and other television on YouTube without having studied Ukrainian. So I am commenting with at least a little direct, untranslated experience.
Why did Zelenskyy make the parody video?
First, because he’s a comedian, and it’s hilarious. Second, he’s a real artist, and his crop-top/stiletto video has much more to say than the Kazaky original, and while it oozes queer esthetic, it is not queer — it’s a tongue-in-cheek statement about Ukrainian history and nationalism, undoubtedly influenced by Russia’s threatening posture that led to the annexation of Crimea later in 2014. Here’s the video, which recently resurfaced on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPT4oGTOHRo
What the hell are those guys parodying?
You can’t understand what Zelenskyy and his buddies are saying without taking a look at the original English-language video Love by Kazaky, a Ukrainian boy band first formed in Kyiv in 2010 and still performing today, though without all the same members. The group’s name is spelled exactly like the Russian word for the Cossacks, a Turkic ethnic group that figures prominently in the history and culture of both Ukraine and Russia.
You can’t enjoy almost any traditional Russian or Ukrainian music or culture without running into constant romantic references to the Cossacks, with whom Ukrainians sometimes identify and modern Russians love to revere, though the history of repression of the Cossack ethnic group is actually very ugly.
In any case, Kazaky is only one letter off from the Ukrainian spelling (Kozaky), pronounced the same in both languages if you account for routine vowel shifts in a dialect continuum. The band, however, claims their name comes from the unrelated Japanese word Kazaki, which may be true but which is hard for a lot of people — including, apparently, Zelenskyy— to take at face value.
Kazaky became very popular for a while as a band, and Love was a 2011 smash hit that helped drive their fame:
Like boy bands and Europop in general (a genre I enjoy when I’m in the right mood) Love is fluffy— style over substance, flash for effect, naughty just to be controversial. Though the video looks and feels very queer, Kazaky at the time (like most boy bands) marketed itself primarily to girls and young women. Queer was not their brand; why they did this song with such a queer style is hard to say. People compare Love to numbers by Queen or the Village People, so maybe they were just playing around.
What isn’t hard to say is what Zelenskyy and company did with it. Their parody opens with all of them in traditional Ukraine, which is to say Cossack, costume. They obviously don’t buy the Japanese explanation for the boy band’s name, and as they strip off and start to dance, they seem to be mocking the original video, which would be funny enough, if perhaps queerphobic.
Then!
They take off. Straight guys all — Zelenskyy is married to a woman and has two children, and I’ve never heard any rumors he’s bisexual— they prance about straight-up mocking stock Russian propaganda phrases, absolutely secure in their sexuality and masculinity as they flounce. They own the Cossack (Ukrainian) identity as they dance, wink, and metaphorically declare allegiance to western values of freedom of expression.
They aren’t mocking queer people or Kazaky; they’re daring to embrace them and kick their art up a notch, or several notches. Considering background levels of traditional eastern European homophobia, this is brave stuff — hilarious and cutting without feeling the least queerphobic. In less deft hands it might have ended up offending everyone, but most Ukrainians loved it and experienced it as a thumb in the nose to Putin’s ideals of Russian supremacy in the slavic world.
It’s not earth-shaking art, though; Ukrainians had largely forgotten about it until a couple weeks ago, but when it showed up on YouTube again, people all over the world expressed their admiration for Zelenskyy as “the real deal,” “the whole package,” “artist and statesman” at the same time, “champion of freedom.”
Why are some Russians and conservative American Christians hating on this video?
Not everyone is expressing admiration for Zelenskyy’s comedic art. Putin supporters in Russia have been using the video to mock the Ukrainian president, with Russian One and RT airing clips as negative commentary.
Then there’s the other group of naysayers … American conservative Christians, many of whom took to YouTube comments sections to jeer at Zelenskyy for being queer, having apparently not understood the parody nature of the video. Here are some highlights:
Finish the job Russia
No wonder Biden likes him, he’d fit right in with Biden’s Cabinet picks!
Now, the best thing he can do is to surrender and give up. Act like a true leader for the sake of your own people at least.
How did this comedian end up becoming a president?
This explains a lot.
This song is full of creepiness
the mood of this humor is the same as his government: 💩
Welcome to the devil’s club
Precursor to him applying for a job in the Biden administration
Now i can understand Putin
Now I understand Putin
cringe now i support Putin
Don’t forget, the Bidens, prosecutor, and Ukraine energy. The $1 billion deal
Maybe Russia isn’t wrong at all
Take a narcissistic fool and make him a leader of a country…
I wonder if all the women who posted to their Facebook page that they have a crush on Zelenskyy know that he’s not interested in women?
This explains a lot [says a guy with a white nationalist frog in his profile]
These comments are deeply weird and contrary to traditional American conservative values
For several generations, white American Evangelicals reviled Russia and the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Gog and Magog of end time prophecies from the New Testament Book of Revelation (20:7–10), evil forces that will join with Satan in the final wars before the destruction of the Earth.
Now, as Christian analyst Steve Rabey reports, prominent Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham are facing a reckoning for having increasingly praised Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years — citing the Russian leader’s uncompromising opposition to LGBTQ equality and the Church’s strong homophobic stand.
“Isn’t it sad, though,” wrote Graham after Russia annexed Crimea, “that America’s own morality has fallen so far that on this issue — protecting children from any homosexual agenda or propaganda — Russia’s standard is higher than our own?”
Graham and other leaders flirted more and more with Putin after that, especially after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, increasingly praising the Russian autocrat for repressing the queer population in Russia.
Evangelical leaders are dialing back fast as public sentiment opposing Russian aggression rises rapidly almost everywhere. But not all their followers have caught the signal that the message has changed.
You can see that clearly on YouTube as American Evangelicals openly hope Putin wins his war of aggression — so he can keep the queers in check, showing that for many conservative Christians hatred of LGBTQ people trumps just about everything — including common decency, humanity, and decades of theological tradition.
Most of us LGBTQ folks already knew that, but if you didn’t, I urge you do take a dive into some serious nastiness. If you have the stomach for it, check out those comments.
source losangelesblade